Microfluidics is the science dealing with manufacturing and operating devices and processes using very small volumes of liquids. Microfluidics systems operate at such small scales that the system behavior is dramatically altered. For example, capillary action changes the way liquid flows through microscopic-diameter tubes.
Microfluidics systems have diverse and wide spread applications. Microfluidics systems include microchips or substrates that have networks that are connected by channels which have mesoscale dimensions, where at least one dimension is usually between 0.1 microns and 500 microns. Such substrates may be fabricated using photolithographic techniques similar to those used in the semi-conductor industry, and the resulting devices can be used to perform a variety of sophisticated chemical and biological analytical techniques. Some of the processes that use this technology include ink jet printers, blood cell separation equipment, biochemical assays, chemical synthesis, genetic analysis, drug screening, surface micromachining, laser ablation and mechanical micromilling.
Many microfluidics systems use electrokinetic (EK) pumping of fluid. These applications generally require a high voltage at a low current. Typically large expensive laboratory power supplies are used for such microfluidics systems. Such laboratory power supplies are available from Bertran Associates of Hicksville, N.Y. and Stanford Research Systems (SRS) of Sunnyvale, Calif. The size and expense of such high voltage power supplies reduce the desirability of these power supplies for use in microfluidics systems that use EK pumping.